


kiss the girl

by capulets



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: A Quick Game Of Kiss Chicken, Disney Magic Doesn’t Equal Real Life Magic, F/M, Lighting Just Does Things To People Sometimes, People Being JJ, Pogue Movie Night Featuring Pining, Spoiler Alert: Everyone Loses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:48:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25557613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capulets/pseuds/capulets
Summary: some traditions are meant to be broken. apparently, the sanctity of movie night isn’t one of them.or, alternatively, jj learns to never ever take a cartoon animal’s love advice.(jiara week day two: activity day)
Relationships: JJ/Kiara (Outer Banks)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 58
Collections: Jiara July Jubilee





	kiss the girl

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! Piece number two for Jiara July. I promise I have actual long content coming up but for today, here’s a super short and sweet, semi fluffy piece. I was watching The Little Mermaid and had an ‘imagine your OTP’ moment so that inspired this and the title! Enjoy ❤️
> 
> XOXO,
> 
> capulets

Pogue movie night (with Sarah now) is boring JJ out of his goddamn mind. No offense to the Kook princess, but  _ The Little Mermaid  _ is pretty much the last thing he wants to be watching. Not to mention the last time he watched a movie with friends, Rafe, Topper, and Kelce had shown up and Kiara lit the screen on fire. Nothing nearly as hot or as stupid is currently happening. 

Sarah and John B are cuddled up together, wrapped around each other like the evil lady’s (what was her name again? Ursa? Uma?) eels. Pope is rattling off facts about the depths of the ocean and the creatures that live there, making sure everyone knows how unrealistic it was for there to be even semi human life at the bottom of the sea. It gets interesting when he starts describing so called ‘sea monsters’, but JJ’s attention wanders off at the slightest indication of anything less exciting. 

That leaves him and Kiara, seated next to each other on the couch. She catches his eye and raises her eyebrows in amusement. The grin on her face, coupled with the fact that he reads her look perfectly ( _ ‘Seriously?  _ _ This _ _ is what’s happening right now?’  _ ) makes the situation a little less shitty. But only a little; there’s still plenty of places he’d rather be and things he’d rather do. 

He shoots her back an eye roll of understanding. While Pope’s somewhat amusing, Sarah and John B’s display of PDA actually makes him want to vomit right onto the floor in front of them. With the music going along with everything (it isn’t even good, in his opinion. Overly sugary bullshit meant for little kids to swallow, which makes him about seventeen years too old for it), he’s five seconds away from jumping up and doing something else, anything else. His fingers have been brushing at the fabric along his pants and Kiara’s since the film began. He has never been able to just sit still, and this dumb movie makes his natural restlessness even worse. At least, until  _ Kiss The Girl  _ comes on.

To be perfectly clear, JJ’s not sappy. Flowing declarations of love and all that other crap have never suited him. Anything cheesy is to be avoided, and anything that gets him into his feelings,  _ any  _ feelings, is not allowed within a ten mile radius. But it’s dark outside and the tv screen is lighting up Kiara’s face and  _ damn, has she always been beautiful?  _

Beautiful. Not hot. Kie is hot all the time, a total smoke show, but in this moment, she’s beautiful. 

The song continues, and JJ’s positive he’s never had to argue with a soundtrack about wanting a girl before (which he  _ doesn’t,  _ not  _ this  _ girl). His fidgeting increases with his irritation. To spite a dumb cartoon, he gently pokes into Kiara’s side, keeping his eyes on the screen. This escalates into halfway batting at each other’s hands and trying to keep a straight face while continuing to half watch the movie. It’s a good distraction, but not enough to keep his eyes from flickering over to her when the crab with a stick up his ass sings,  _ “Kiss the girl,”  _ for the very first time. Thankfully, she’s focused on the screen. Her face is scrunched up in minor disgust as the prince tries to guess the redhead’s name, but she ends up chuckling at his lame attempts and the crab’s save. 

“You know, I bet I could get you to kiss me without the cheesy ass soundtrack,” he hums over to her, shooting her his best playboy smirk as he jokingly slides his arm around her shoulders. He ignores the jolt of electricity that passes through him with the contact. 

_ ‘It doesn’t matter.’ _

Kie snorts, “In your dreams, Maybank,” and he combats, “Oh, I  _ know  _ they’re in yours, Carrera,” with a flirtatious wink. She just shakes her head, but amazingly, she doesn’t move his arm from its spot. He’d expected her to pick it up and set it back down away from her, but she seems cool with it. That or she hasn’t noticed. Either way, he doesn’t move. He stares straight at the screen, pushing down any thoughts that threaten to break through when Kiara subtly sets her head against his shoulder.   


“I don’t think that’s a bet you wanna make,” she says offhandedly, almost underneath her breath. He narrows his eyes down at her to hide the fact that he stopped moving for two point five seconds at the new bout of contact (and the subsequent buzzing) but goes back to watching within a second and a half. 

The goddamn crab is still singing, and the redhead and the prince actually look like they’re gonna kiss. That’s the only thing keeping JJ from jumping out of his skin right now, genuinely paying attention to a really stupid movie. Kie shifts closer to him and that lightning strike feeling intensifies. He’s well aware of the fact that no one he’s ever been with has had an effect over him like she does. And the romantic-ish lighting with the song isn’t lost on him either, try as he might to ignore it. He just wishes these cartoon characters would shut up, because he’s looking at Kiara again and  _ shit  _ she’s looking back at him and  _ fuck  _ the look in her eyes is something else. Her pupils are dilated (thank you, Pope, for explaining that one time), and there’s softness in her expression mixed with an intensity he’s very familiar with but never in regards to her. Kiara’s head tilts up, and he watches as her eyes flicker down to his lips and back up again. His do the same, and his head moves ever so slightly down towards hers. 

“Kie,” he whispers, a warning shot. He’s giving her a chance to back out, which is basically a golden ticket for JJ since he usually goes straight in for a mack on someone. His heartbeat is thundering now, and he swears she knows what she’s doing when she sneaks a hand onto his chest, right above his heart as her face creeps ever closer to his. It’s like she’s messing with him, teasing him, testing the waters to see if he’ll crack or run. For better or for worse, he’s glued in place. 

There’s no way they’re gonna do this, right? He is  _ not  _ going to kiss one of his best friend’s while the other two makeout obliviously and another is fact checking and cracking little jokes about sea monsters along the way. It’s not happening. Unless it is, in which case he should really make a move  _ now _ and say fuck it since this opportunity won’t arise again later. 

Dimly, he registers that the song is coming to an end and he’s about to have taken a cartoon crab’s advice about romance when he hears, “Right, JJ?” just as Kiara’s lips brush his. The pressure is barely there but it’s a pressure nonetheless. And all he wants to do is pin her to the back of the couch and make her forget her own name, any name but his, but he can’t. Because Pope just asked him a question in  _ that  _ tone, the tone that JJ knows will change to something less lighthearted and innocent if he goes for it. So he moves away, retracting his arm and plasters a grin to his face as he turns to look at his other friend and says, “Yeah, man. For sure.” 

John B and Sarah are still macking each other’s faces off, and JJ almost chickens out and skips over Kiara with his gaze but the second she’s in the corner of his eye, it’s like he has to look at her. And she looks  _ pissed.  _ More than that, almost… hurt? That can’t be right. Because she wasn’t _actually_ going to kiss him. She was messing with him like always, pulling him in only to push him back out again. The almost kiss that occurred wasn’t even a kiss at all, then. It was a fluke, something that happened because neither of them wanted to back down first. Even if that’s true, JJ can’t help but imagine the _what if_. Being able to kiss her during a cheesy movie and enjoying the hell out of it like he’s positive he would. Briefly, fleetingly, he wants to do something, anything to let her know that he would’ve won their little game and whatever prize it entailed. But in the next second she’s leaning back, moving over a few feet on the couch and tuning back into the movie. His belated window of opportunity goes with her.

The prince and the redhead didn’t get their kiss after all. But Pope’s happy and chatting his ear off again; that has to count for something. Still, JJ can’t help the quiet, frustrated,  _ “Fuck,”  _ that exits his mouth in an angsty sigh. 

This is the last time he’ll ever take advice from a kid’s movie.


End file.
